Mencap devises paid search campaign with help from Torchbox

The brief included driving offline audiences to the campaign’s online landing page and ensuring an impression share of as close as possible to 100% for Mencap’s ads in Google’s search results on the day of the campaign’s launch.

The problematic overlap that came with the phrase ‘Here I Am’ – which appeared as a recent publication by Jonathan Safran Foer, the title of a Bryan Adam’s song and a map of the user's current location when typed into Google – forced the charity to experiment with locutions. Torchbox, who have worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and University of Oxford, advised Mencap on a suitable search term to use across all non-digital media, which was utilised as the central call-to-action across Mencap’s TV, cinema and print advertising.

Tessa Adelaar, digital manager at Mencap, said of the project: “This was the first time we ran a campaign with a call to action asking people to search for a certain term to drive traffic and conversions. Torchbox really helped us shape the strategy and supported us during launch and the weeks following to make sure we would guide every single person searching for this campaign to our landing page."

Phil McMinn, Torchbox’s head of search, commented: "What was so heartening about the work we did with Mencap was the response from fellow charities and NGOs in the sector. At meetings and pitches in the weeks and months after the campaign launched, whenever I mentioned this project, people had heard about it and displayed real respect for what Mencap had done. It reminded me how powerful this kind of marketing can be."

The PPC campaign resulted in a 98% impression share on the day of launch, with over 800 clicks coming from paid search in the first two days of the campaign. You can find out more about the campaign journey and the results it produced here.

This article was first published on The Drum.